Michigan college student wins AT&T app contest

Nov. 2, 2013

Associated Press

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Associated Press

A college student from Gaylord developed an app that took the top prize in an AT&T "Hackathon" mobile development contest.

Aaron Crawfis, 18, and two others created the application called "Beacon," which was designed to help people locate friends at concerts, and sports or other large events, according to the Petoskey News-Review.

"I had no experience in app development," he told the newspaper. "But I had an idea. I had trouble finding my friends on campus."

Crawfis is a graduate of St. Mary Cathedral School in Gaylord and a freshman majoring in electrical engineering at Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. He learned about the national app contest in an engineering class.

He went to the two-day "Hackathon" at the university, presented the idea and was joined by two others he had not known previously. They spent the weekend learning to build the program.

"I went from knowing nothing at all to developing a full app in under 18 hours," Crawfis said.

The app finds people and pinpoints their location with a red dot on a map. It works on iPhones and Android phones.

"You can only see their location if they want you to and if their phone is on," Crawfis said. "If their phone is in their pocket, their location goes dark and then it automatically turns off after 5 minutes for privacy. That's what makes our app unique."

They learned a week after the event that they had won the top prize: $1,000 and an all-expenses paid trip to Dallas in January to pitch "Beacon" to the AT&T executive board.

They also have been offered a free two-month contract with a Notre Dame think tank that provides resources and space to help entrepreneurs cultivate ventures.

"Their intent is to help us launch this and create a business out of it," Crawfis said.